Pa. Abortion Doctor’s Murder Trial Goes to Jury

“Abortion — as is any surgical procedure — isn’t pretty,” McMahon said. “It’s bloody. It’s real. But you have to transcend that.”

And he refused to back down from aggressive opening remarks in which he called prosecutors “elitist” and “racist” for pursuing his client, who is black.

“We know why he was targeted,” McMahon said.

Cameron called Gosnell’s operation an assembly line for a stream of poor, mostly minority women and teens, including Karnamaya Mongar, who came from Virginia for an abortion after she was turned away at three other clinics, starting when she was 15 weeks pregnant. Gosnell is charged with third-degree murder in her overdose death.

“Are you human?” Cameron asked Gosnell, “to med these women up and stick knives in the backs of babies?”

The doctor sat calmly at the defense table, as he has throughout the often graphic six-week trial.

Former clinic employee Eileen O’Neill, 56, of Phoenixville, is also on trial, charged with six counts of theft for allegedly billing as a doctor when she was not licensed. O’Neill’s lawyer has argued that O’Neill worked under Gosnell’s supervision. The jury, asking its first question barely an hour into deliberations, had Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Minehart repeat that charge, suggesting they may be starting with O’Neill’s case.

Gosnell did not testify but might take the stand if he is convicted and the trial moves to the penalty phase. He has described himself as an altruistic doctor who returned to serve his medically needy community.

“He provided those desperate young girls with relief. He gave them a solution to their problems,” McMahon argued Monday.

But Cameron said whatever intentions he may have once had turned criminal as he focused more on getting rich than on his patients.

“He created an assembly line with no regard for these women whatsoever. And he made money doing that,” Cameron said.